1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a pattern inspection technique for detecting defects and particles of an inspected pattern, and especially relates to an inspection method and an inspection tool for easily setting an inspection condition to be used in defect inspection of the inspected pattern such as a semiconductor wafer, a liquid crystal display, or a photomask.
2. Description of the Related Art
An inspection process is indispensable in order to improve yield of a semiconductor device, and the inspection tool for detecting abnormality of the wafer and specifying a cause of reduction in yield is essential for a production process of the semiconductor device. Also, it is required to speed up the inspection for an efficient inspection, and it is desired to inspect many points in a short time. Contents of the inspection are wide-ranging such as a film thickness, a pattern pitch, an appearance quality, the particles, the defect, and an analysis of components thereof. In order to inspect the contents accurately and rapidly, it is necessary to accurately and fully utilize the inspection tool corresponding to the objects. Therefore, the tool easily used in a short period even by a user unfamiliar with the tool is desired.
In such a tool, however, it is necessary to appropriately set many parameters for setting an operation condition in most cases. In addition, even if a parameter visually judged without uncomfortable feeling such as brightness and contrast is to be set, it is necessary to set a parameter using a numerical value in an actual tool, for example, to set a numerical value 5 in a range from 0 to 10. Other than this example, setting means and contents are wide-ranging. For example, some parameters are represented by a format other than a numerical value such as Normal, Medium and Hard, and other parameters are set by a length of a colored portion by using a slide bar. In many cases, the relationships between a name of the parameter and an actual effect is not understood at one sight. Therefore, in order to appropriately set them, the contents of the parameters should be sufficiently comprehended. However, the contents of the parameters are often the contents inherent to the tool, and therefore the user should be skilled in handling the tool in advance and study the contents of the parameter. This is especially an obstacle for a user who does not use the tool regularly or a beginner to use the tool efficiently.
Therefore, in order to remove the obstacle and to use the tool easily, the method of displaying the set inspection parameters and the results thereof as a list to make them visually understandable is invented (refer to, for example, JP2004-294358A1). According to this technique, the results calculated with each combination of all of the parameters for all of the defect images are displayed as a list. However, the user should select an optimal parameter group from the parameter groups displayed as a list, in consideration of a defect detection number and the defect image. Therefore, a high level of skill is necessary on such selection.